More on William Seward, another walk through the Golden Age, and writing like a rifle: newsletter, November 13, 2020

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William Seward: Just enough virtue (part 2)

William Seward might have become president of the United States except for two words he uttered in a speech in 1858. The words were “irrepressible conflict.”

The words don’t sound like much to us today, but in that turbulent decade before the outbreak of the Civil War, they ignited flames that would do great damage to Seward’s presidential ambitions.

Seward had spent that decade navigating through the shifting tides of the issue of slavery and its expansion or containment. As a senator from New York, he had watched the disintegration of his Whig party over the issue and the rise of the Free-Soilers and eventually the formation of the Republican Party. He and his friend and political mentor Thurlow Weed, the publisher of the Albany Evening Journal, had played key roles in the consolidation of the party into a political force strong enough to put forth a candidate for president in 1856 (John C. Fremont).

While the Republicans did not win the presidency in 1856, it was obvious that public opinion in the North was flowing in their direction.

Not so in the South. Southerners had developed an ultra-sensitivity to anything anyone said that threatened their cherished slavery system. The words that Seward spoke, “irrepressible conflict,” landed on their ears as an acknowledgment that Northerners, particularly Republicans, had decided that they would attempt to get rid of slavery by force.

Part of this sensitivity was political. That is, no Southern politician in that political environment could lose by raising the specter of a Northern invasion of the South. But the words also tapped into a deep-seated fear among Southerners.

Seward was especially vulnerable to Southern hatred. He had made no secret of his opposition to slavery during his political career, and his position in 1858 as a chief spokesman of the Republican Party — the “Black Republicans,” as Southerners referred to them — caused Southerners to dissect and interpret every word that he said.

Had Southerners been generally aware of what was going on inside the Seward house in Auburn, New York, they would have raised even louder alarms. Seward’s wife, Frances, was a fully committed abolitionist, and while he was in Washington, D.C., she had made the house a stop on the Underground Railroad that assisted runaway slaves to their freedom.

But why did Seward’s words hurt his chances at the Republican presidential nomination in 1860s?

Many Republicans still believed that their party could make some in-roads into the South if they chose their words carefully and never implied that the North would try to force a non-slavery system onto the South. Many of them began to look around for another candidate who would not be such a lightning rod for the opposition. A few believed they found one in an obscure Illinois attorney named Abraham Lincoln.

William Seward ultimately did not achieve his dream of becoming president. Instead, he became Lincoln’s Secretary of State and as such rendered enormous service to the Republic and to the goal of the preservation of the Union. Few presidents have achieved more than Seward did in the years 1861-1865.

A Scott Berg‘s biography of Woodrow Wilson contains the following passage on the Rev. Joseph Wilson‘s advice to his son on how to form sentences:

“When you frame a sentence, don’t do it as if you were loading a shotgun, but as if you were loading a rifle. Don’t fire in such a way and with such a load that while you hit the thing you aim at you will hit a lot of things in the neighbourhood besides; but shoot with a single bullet and hit that one thing alone.” (quoted material)

The reverend wasn’t talking to his son, the future president, about writing; he was telling him how to speak.​

But the advice applies marvelously to writing. Write your sentences as if they are rifles, aiming as a specific target, rather than shotguns aiming a the neighborhood. Write as if you purchase PA-10 rifles from Palmetto State Armory every single weekend—which is to say that you must brush up your vocabulary every now and then— and shoot [the words] at a specific subject.

How do you do that?

Here are a few thoughts from an old journalism prof:

Recognize the target. What are you trying to accomplish with this sentence? What are you saying? The subject and predicate should work together to accomplish your purpose.

Choose precisely the right words. Most words have a shade of meaning to them. That is, they may have synonyms, but those synonyms don’t mean exactly the same thing. The good writer knows words and their synonyms but is sensitive to their meanings and how they are used. The good writer has a sense of how readers will interpret those words. Thinking hard about the words rewards writers with sentences that mean exactly what they are intended to mean.

Use only the words necessary. This gets to the heart of Joseph Wilson’s advice. The truly confident writer is the one who will let as few words as possible stand for what he or she means to say. Showering the reader with unnecessary words is the shotgun approach. As Wilson says, you may hit the target, but you may hit a lot of other things too. Hitting a lot of targets will dilute the sentence’s impact.

Let nothing distract. Our minds move from one subject to the next far more quickly than we can physically construct a sentence. While we are in the middle of writing a sentence, we may think of other things to say, other pieces of information to include. The discipline of writing includes keeping our eye on the target. It’s a discipline that can be acquired through practice.

Take the reader there. The reader will begin a sentence at a certain place. By the end of the sentence, you want the reader to be at another place. Take the reader there as quickly and efficiently as you can.

Joseph Wilson’s advice to his son is universal for those of us who love the language and want to use it well.

I asked for reading recommendations to distract us from the day’s news in last week’s newsletter and got several from faithful readers.

Sandra G: Enjoyed your “Voting” article. Looked eagerly to see if you had a watercolor of one of those wrap-around lines since hubby & I were in one for 40 minutes but it was a warm, beautiful day & we didn’t mind. One thing we’ve had to learn in retirement is to relax, we really aren’t in as big a rush as we think or like we used to be.

Curtis D.: (Distracting read recommendation) An old one but one of my favorites. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor .

Amy L.: I just finished The River of Doubt (Candace Millard) about T. Roosevelt’s final adventure exploring the Amazon in 1914. It was incredible! It was very well researched and just spell-binding. It’s hard to believe anyone survived the trip.